Plant nutrients, which come primarily from chemical fertilizers, manure, and in some cases sewage sludge, are essential for crop production. When applied in proper quantities and at appropriate times, nutrients (especially nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) help achieve optimum crop yields. The profit potential for farmers depends on producing enough crops per hectare to keep production costs below the selling price. Efficient application of the correct types and amounts of fertilizers for the supply of the nutrients is an important part of achieving profitable yields. Further, to meet the continuously increasing demand for food commodities, it is important to increase the nutrient density of nutrients applied to agricultural crops and develop methods for plants to absorb these nutrients more efficiently, thereby helping farmers increase their crop output.
Nutrient density can be defined as the quantity of a nutrient per unit of weight of produce or sap. It is generally expressed in terms of grams/100 grams, as a percentage of weight of the given nutritional component in total weight for high quantity substances as in sucrose.
The sugar available to the plants from an applied nutrient solution may be measured in degrees Brix (° Bx), which is defined as the sugar content of an aqueous solution. One degree Brix is 1 gram of sucrose in 100 grams of solution and represents the strength of the solution as percentage by weight (% w/w). The Brix degree can also be expressed as parts per million by weight in components present in relative trace amounts.
It is known that for every one point increase in the Brix degree, a series of beneficial results, related to greater nutrient transport, occur, including, but not limited to, enhanced transport of nutrients into the cellular substance of the plant, increased sugar and protein content of the food, higher nutrient density for a given application of nutrients, greater resistance to pests and pathological microbes (on the order of 50% or greater improvement in resistance relative to crops treated with unactivated nutrients), and significantly higher yields of produce per plant per hectare cultivated.
One exemplary crop that would benefit from increased nutrient density is cannabis. Cannabis comprises numerous different compositions which deliver varied therapeutic and medicinal benefits, including, but not limited to, cannabinoids, terpenoids/terpenes, nitrogenous compounds, amino acids, proteins, enzymes, glycoproteins, sugars, hydrocarbons, fatty acids, simple esters and lactones, steroids, non-cannabinoid phenols, flavonoids, and vitamins. It would be beneficial if the concentration and/or yield of one or more of those individual compounds within a cannabis crop can be increased through an improved nutrient solution.
Accordingly, there is a need for improving large scale agricultural food production and the nutrient density of crops. There is also a need to enhance the transport of nutrients in an organism in order to increase the food item's Brix degree or other nutrient values. Accordingly, there is a need for methods and compositions to enhance the transport of nutrients, increase the Brix degree, increase the concentration and/or yield of individual compositions within a crop, and/or reliably achieve the above listed biological effects for a wide variety of nutrients and food items.